I had a very interesting conversation today at work about poker. There are so many people out there that suggest or truly believe that there isn’t any skill involved in poker…just dumb luck. I invite everyone who believes this to come play a fews sessions of poker at my house, and we’ll see how much skill it takes to win!
I read an interesting article today and I couldn’t give a better argument if I tried, so I’ll just give a few of the main points from the article and let you read the whole thing if you are interested.
The biggest distinction between poker and gambling is that in pretty much all gambling, you are playing against the house.
In poker, the house has no interest in the outcome, and is an impartial provider of services-for-a-fee, a forum for the players to compete equally against each other.
Another major difference between poker and gambling is that the rules of poker accord every player a statistically equal chance to win, but the rules of gambling games all give the house a definite advantage against the player, which over time is inexorable and inevitable. In essence, poker is fair, gambling is not.
Poker is a game of skill. It is a contest of abilities, more akin to bridge or chess than it is to gambling, in that more-talented players will prevail against less-talented players. Chance can and will affect short-term results, but skill separates winners from losers over time.
You?ll never get to play a pickup game against Michael Jordan or a round of golf against Tiger, or tear up the track against Matt Kenseth, but you can plop your buy-in down and take on Doyle Brunson or Howard Lederer.
Nick Momrik 
Stu Ugnar did not loose his money to poker. He lost all of his money to gambling such as sport betting, cocaine and other drugs. A lot of people regarded Chip Reese as the best all around poker player. Ugnar was hands down the greatest Gin player ever and best Texas Hold Em player there is. Ugnar has a photographic memory by the way. From what poker players like Doyle Brunson and Mike Sexton said Ugnar was very generous with money. People estimated Ugnar to have won at least $40mil.
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You guys have to realize that most hands will never make it to showdown (meaning, the two players flip over their hands and whoever has the best one wins). Every human being has a particular level of risk aversion, meaning they are willing to risk a certain amount in a given situation in order to invest in a favorable outcome. That being said, for one to be a winning player, it is important to know when a person will call/fold/raise in a given situation, based on your read of their hand and what you think they think you have.
Based on this, you can pick the spots where you want the hands to actually go to showdown. Many books say that when this does happen, you should have a significant amount of your money invested when you are nearly certain that you have the best hand, and that it should only happen at a rate of about one per hour.
During the rest of the time during the session, you should be stealing pots based on position and reads to keep yourself afloat. This means playing selectively aggressively and building up your stack over time. With a particular style against the right group of people, you can be successful in a given series of sessions regardless of the cards.
There is actually a story of a young 16-yr old German or Danish girl that made the final table of a massive multi-table tournament card blind (meaning she couldn’t see her cards). If anyone has more info on this I would appreciate it
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Not luck or skill but instinct and personal experience…
A hand as an example
Person A has 9 10 of diamonds (d)
Person B has A 10 off-suit
Blinds are 250 / 500
B raises 2000 – A Calls
Flop
A(d) 10 7(d)
A checks, B bets the pot and A calls
Turn
8
A checks and B bets 75% the pot which is over half the stack of A
Situation:
At this point person A knows B has him beat but he has and open-ended straight and flush draw.
Based on personal experience some players will call, others won’t and some will move all-in.
Whatever move A makes, it will be based on his instinct and past experiences.
1) When A knows/feels B is someone who doubts his hands easily he can get him to fold with an all-in.
2) When B is someone who is confident about his hands, A will be taking a risk with an all-in but someone who often makes his draw on the river, so someone who is more lucky than most, might still go all-in.
So it’s based on the experience of luck you had and not will have…
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To anyone who knows at least a bit about poker, it is obvious that poker is in general a game of skill. It is no coincidence that the people who say it is a game of luck are either:
a) people who never played poker.
b) people who played for a week, lost all their money, and quit.
I’ve been playing poker for 6 years, at least a dozen hours every week. That’s 72 months of playing = 288 weeks of playing = at least 3500 hours of playing (definitely more, but for the sake of the argument I won’t elevate it). I play 8-12 tables depending on the poker room. That’s usually 1,000 hands per hour. This means I’ve played at least 3,500,000 (three and a half million) hands so far. And there are thousands of other players like that out there, if not more.
The thing about poker is that it requires a very special skillset to be good at it. You need to:
1) be rather good with math (or at least be able to calculate quickly)
2) be able to detach yourself from your ego
3) be very, VERY patient
4) have an ‘investor’ type mindset, as opposed to a ‘man if I could only make 20,000$ I’d cash everything out and buy a car, yupiii!!!’
5) have an analytical mind and tons of attention to the smallest details
6) have a VERY good memory
7) have the ability to self-analyze yourself critically and look at your skills subjectively
8) be able to devote lots of time to hand analysis
9) have extremely good concentration and discipline
I could probably name at least 7-8 more, but I won’t. If you look at this list, you will notice that it is very hard to find a person who fulfills just THREE of these requirements, let alone all of them. And this is actually what it takes to be a good poker player, and to stay at the top for years to come.
Poker is the hardest way to make easy money.
It is no wonder that 95% of all players fail. And the only way for them to justify their failure is to cry out “boohooo, this is a game of luck, I couldn’t affect the outcome of the hand”.
Wrong. Whoever says that is simply a terrible poker player and doesn’t know how to learn the game / lacks proper guidance. That’s it.
Consider the following: in poker, every player is dealt two cards at random. They see exactly the same flop, same turn, same river. If poker was a game of pure luck, then in the long run no one would lose nor win. Everyone would be breakeven!
It is what a poker player DOES with the information that he has that separates the winning player from the losing one. Anything that gives him an edge over his opponent will give him a slightly bigger edge on his opponent. And in the end, once mathematics and statistic ruthlessly even out any luck factors in the game through sheer huge hand sample sizes, the constants (two dealt cards/community cards) even out and return a sum of zero, like matter and antimatter particles meeting together.
And all that remains then, is your Edge.
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Assume someone moves all in with AA and you call with KK. Calling is the correct play because the odds of someone having AA is statistically low. Although you are smarter than your opponent you still have your money at risk and you are at mathematical disadvantage. If you are honest with yourself, have you ever laid down Kings because someone had Aces?
The house takes a cut of every pot that you win. Therefore, you cannot afford to enter pots you aren’t going to win because your mathematical advantage has to be high enough to overcome your opponents and the house rake. The people making $ on poker are the casinos and marketing executives who put it on TV.
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